Before It Breaks
by subversivegrrl
Summary: Written for a call for entries on the USS Caryl, re: Carol's storyline in S4. No happy endings here, sorry. I don't know what's going to happen (I'm not even sure I believe this is how things went down, at all): this is just one possible take on Carol's motivations and how she's feeling, having been banished from the prison. Lyric is from Brandi Carlile's "Before It Breaks."


The worst part was falling asleep every night thinking about how far she was from the people she loved, wondering if they were safe, warm and happy, feeling a fist in her chest so big she could scarcely breathe. Or maybe it was lying awake, hyper-alert in the silence that told her she was anywhere but home. No echoes of footsteps along the tiers of cells, no clang of someone's belt knife hitting a railing, no 2 a.m. wail rising from Judith, just down the hall. No feeling like a voyeur as Maggie and Glenn argued in agitated whispers, then made up, more noisily than they'd fought. No children's giggles, no Beth's soft singing. Not any more.

_Say it ain't so, say I'm happy again..._

Every day, she woke up and made a promise to herself not to give in to the despair. She wasn't the timid, cowed woman she'd been; that woman had died the day she took a mattock to the head of the walker she'd been married to. And died again when her daughter lurched out of that barn and looked at her with hungry, dead eyes. And then found things to live for again, learning to live with the fear, making herself strong. Finding some good left, maybe even love to call her own. A place where she belonged, and people she belonged to.

It was from that strength that she'd made a choice, and now she'd live with the consequences. Or die. Either way, she risked only herself.

If Rick hadn't figured it out, she probably could have gone on as before, care-taking and planning and trying to make a better life for those who remained. She would have felt guilty - she did feel guilty - but she would have learned to live with that, too. That's what she did - learned to live with what was, instead of weeping over what was gone, or what might have been. _Someone else's slideshow_ was how she got past the pain, by tucking it away into a side compartment and only rarely taking it out to look at it.

She knew that, for most of the people at the prison, she now would be first and foremost in their minds a murderer, and how could they let her walk freely among them? Because it wasn't just about her people any more - there were thirty-plus human beings there now in addition to her own family, every one struggling to keep body and soul together. She'd looked at the hard truth of things and decided that someone had to act, to try to stop the flu's spread before it ended them all. It wasn't about her, or even about her family - it was about the future. Despite everything, she was still an optimist. She still believed that the human race could come back from this, could rediscover what had kept them alive for all those millennia, could still love and pair off and have babies and repopulate the damn world. All they had to do was stay alive. And if one person's ruthless act could save a dozen, or more, to help make that happen? she had thought she could stand be the one. Not out of some sort of nobility, but out of hope.

Her first reaction to Rick's order of exile had been to plead with him, beg him to take it back, to let her go back home, even if she had to face Tyreese's demand for vengeance, and the cold, disgusted faces of people who once had trusted her. But he had been unyielding, and when he said _my children_ she'd known he was right, even if not for the reasons he'd given. What kind of example would it be for the children, to know what she'd done and see her walking around, free to live her life?

It wasn't her choice to be alone and scared, but leaving them would have been worth it to her if her actions had saved even one them. By the time they'd left the prison that morning, though, she'd known it hadn't worked; all they had to believe in now was whatever medicine Daryl's crew might have brought back from the vet school, and her sacrifice, willing though it might have been, had been just another frail and futile gesture, flinging defiance into the teeth of chaos and getting chewed up anyway. She felt like the defeat might crush her.

_Say it's over, say I'm dreaming_  
_Say I'm better than you left me_  
_Say you're sorry, I can take it_

She thought she could take it if, by giving them up, she'd made it possible for them to go on a little longer, to find a way forward. She had to accept that she might never know.

Her one real sorrow in all of it was Daryl. She'd begun to believe that she could have some kind of life with him, even in this hell world, after existing in a state of suspended animation for so many years. It didn't seem fair that the two of them had each paid so much and gotten so little back, but time had just run short on them. And now she'd left him, just like everyone else in his life, and never even told him goodbye. It was like poison in her stomach, to think of how much she must have hurt him. To know that hers was probably not the only heart turning to stone tonight.

_Say you'll wait, say you won't_  
_Say you love me, say you don't_  
_I can make my own mistakes_  
_Learn to let it bend before it breaks_

The grief she had been holding back rolled over her like a tidal wave, smashing her down into the darkness until she thought her bones would shatter. She wrapped her arms around herself and wept, rocking, until exhaustion took her over and she finally slept.


End file.
